


Letter from Home

by BarPurple



Category: Cthulhu Mythos - H. P. Lovecraft
Genre: Horror, Original Character Death(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-26
Updated: 2017-08-26
Packaged: 2018-12-20 02:15:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11911110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BarPurple/pseuds/BarPurple





	Letter from Home

You can take the girl from the sea, but you can’t take the sea from the girl; that’s what her father had said to her before she left for university. It was one of those clichéd phrases that always sounded like a thinly veiled insult. Doesn’t matter how far you go, or what you achieve, this place will always own you. The only time it took on a different tone was when it formed part of the lyrics of a Country song; then it became so saccharinely nostalgic that it was apt to make a body ill.

It resonated with Marie, as it probably did for many of the new students at the Midlands university she had left the coast for; each trying to educate themselves away from their hometowns, to lay down new roots in a soil that encouraged growth and change. Accents were the first to be shed, any burr or twang that served as an identifier of the past they wanted to leave behind was buried under perfect elocution, to the point that classes often sounded like they were populated by BBC newsreaders. She couldn’t do anything about the slushy lisp of sibilants that marked her home accent, but since no one knew of her hometown it was accepted as a speech impediment and diplomatically not mentioned.

Marie wondered in her first week how many of her fellow Freshers had gone as far as she had and changed their names. Here she was no longer Marina, child of the sea, but plain Marie, one of many with that given name. She’d spotted a few who paused a beat before offering their full name, and then were a little slow to respond to it. She made no comment, understanding that they had their reasons just as she did.

By November she’d stopped waking to the pull of the tides. She’d made friends, although after the first visit she avoided the sushi bars they were so fond of. The smell of the place, so heavy with the sea, made her skin itch, and the wet shine of the fish looked at once familiar and wrong.

In December the letter arrived. Her flatmate questioned the cheap envelope since it bore the wrong first name. Marie had explained that away as an old joke from an annoying cousin. The lie came easily and was accepted, but left an oily taste of guilt in her throat.

Without salutation or signature she knew the letter was from her mother; written on a sheet of notepaper torn from the pad kept by the phone in the hallway. She could the indentations of the shopping list that had been scrawled on the previous sheet. Puzzling out what her mother had wanted to buy distracted her from the five words that formed the message for her. She couldn’t avoid those words for long, the sinuous script drew her eye like bait lures a fish. 

It rises. Heed the call.

The old hymns she had learnt as a child at her grandfather’s knee rose to a deafening chant in her mind. She bit down hard on her traitorous tongue as it tried to give voice to the words until the briny taste of blood filled her throat and choked her into a gurgling scream. The inhuman sounds spilled forth in a rush of ink dark blood. Salt and tide called the child of the sea home.

Marie’s roommate was moved to a different hall. She refused to speak of the events surrounding the death. The university counsellor had tried to tell her that it was an unfortunate incident, a rare and fatal medical condition that had gone undiagnosed, but she knew better. No medical condition, however rare, could explain the seaweed and shells Marie had coughed up with her dying breaths.


End file.
